Fantasy Football Podcast 2016 - Tier Breakdowns, Pat Mayo from FNTSY Network, News

Blake Bartles is... I think that's something we're going to talk about today, too, isn't it? Yeah, oh, do we talk with Mayo on? Did we go to Bortles? I think we did. All right, well, then we'll skip over Bortles for now, because I want to talk about Philip Rivers, my other quarterback target. I'm taking over the show, and I'm just professing my love for all the guys that I want on my team this year. I think, if you recall, when Keenan Allen was healthy, Philip Rivers was making a push to be the number one overall fantasy quarterback.

I see a situation where that could return. I think the offense remains very similar to what it was last year. Keenan Allen, big extension offer right now? Absolutely. I think Keenan Allen will be resigned before the year starts. I just love the potential of Philip Rivers. And we talked about how you can get Breeze a little bit later. Rivers, you can get after Breeze. So I would not reach for Philip Rivers, but you're talking the round 10 or so?

That's when I'm all in on Philip Rivers. Now you notice that's through tier number four at the quarterback position. If you go into the ultimate draft kit, you can sort that by four point.

passing touchdown leagues as well. So you see Russell Wilson jumps up a tier, things like that. Worth noting that our tier four guys are ahead of our tier five guys like James Winston, Andy Dalton, Tony Romo, Matt Stafford's in that tier number five, and Kirk Cousins, Tyrod Taylor. And you can see all of those on the website. We're going to move on now to the running backs. I'm going to go half point per reception.

Tears. Okay. Well, that's what we're going to go through. We're just going through that because it's the best scoring system, though. Right. That's the only reason why. This is backed by science. Scientific studies have shown me. Half point PPR. Well, I shot Neil, my buddy Neil. You guys know DeGrasse Tyson? Oh, yeah. I shot him a tweet, and I was like, hey, you know, in your professional... But you said you shot him.

No, never. No, no. You shot Neil DeGrasse Tyson? I DMed. We DM back and forth. Watch your back, Neil. A professional astrophysicist, you know, what's the best scoring for fantasy football? Half point. And he went, he emoted and gift that face. Oh. Well, now you know. Half point, bro.

And he's a rocket ship scientist, right? He lacks the way he talks on Twitter. All right, Lev Bell's all alone in Tier 1. Is this appropriate? Absolutely. Do we need to ask Pat Mayo about this? We sure do. All right. So Lev Bell sitting all alone and look, the gap that we have in projected points in our tiers between Lev Bell and anybody else is huge. It's very large. Between it.

Between first place and second place there is 35 points. Yikes. That is a lot of points. All right. So let's talk about Tier 2 because that's what people want to know. Where do we break these guys up? We have David Johnson, Todd Garley, Jamal Charles, and Adrian Peterson. Yeah, I like the way that they've cheered it out. I love all those guys.

right now. It'll be interesting for me to see if any of them, I can actually get any on my team the way that I want to draft with going early on the wide receivers. I think Jamal Charles is a guy that's slipping later. So he's a good target if you want one of those top tier guys. You can get him. We just did a, we're going to do a mock draft in a little while. And I've seen Jamal Charles go in round two in mock drafts when you're drafting pretty late.

Yeah, I think Jamal Charles, the question with him is, you're coming off the ACL tear, can he keep up the yards per carries? You know, the red flags might drop him down in drafts, but he's Jamal Charles. It's funny, that tier is like two seemingly safe guys, two seemingly risky guys. You know, so you take, yeah, you got David Johnson, Jamal Charles, little risky, Todd Gurley, Adrian Peterson. The two guys who don't really catch the ball. Right. Funny enough. I think that, is that volatility or risk? Because...

If David Johnson and Jamal Charles are so dependent on the passing game, do you feel like they're just more volatile? Well, I don't feel like they're dependent on the passing game. I just think that they are heavily involved where Peterson and Gerley, I think we know who he is. Gurley, maybe he could evolve into that, and there's news of him slimming up and he wants to be more involved in the passing game. I don't know if if Gurley gets more involved in the passing game. Well, yeah, good grief. All right, we're going to start Tier 3 with a guy that had...

50 receptions in 12 games last year. Mark Ingram is the first name in Tier 3. I believe he climbs up into Tier 2 for our standard tiers, but he's the first guy off the board here or, you know, first guy in our Tier 3. You got Lamar Miller, LaShawn McCoy, Ezekiel Elliott, Doug Martin, Eddie Lacey, and Devontah.

Freeman, and I definitely want to ask Pat Mayle about Ezekiel Elliott and where he belongs, because a lot of people have him all over the map. He's another guy that draws the very strong opinions from different experts. And so we have to ask him about Zeke. But let's turn our attention to Doug Martin. Because Doug Martin, if you project him like last season, a very big year, Mike, I don't know if you can grab the stats for me real quick. But he had a 4.9 average. I remember that.

I'm pulling him up right now. And he was very productive. But now you're dropping him into Tier 3. And I think there are some that would say, isn't Doug Martin worthy of Tier 2? So Doug Martin finished with 288 carries over 1,400 yards, six touchdowns on the ground. And then a little bit involved in the passing game, 33 receptions. Now, we're not the only ones. I'm not saying we're the ones fading Doug Martin. His average job position right now is in the second round. You guys love Martin. I'm a little bit more cool. So I guess tell me why. I just, it's.

It comes down to I don't know who Doug Martin is. I called him the poop sandwich, I think, because he has those two middle years where he couldn't fight through his injuries. There's still a very nice name. It's really not. He said he didn't like the muscle hamster. Yeah, he's been searching for a nickname, poop sandwich. Oh, my gosh. So much worth. Cover your ears, Doug. It's not that I...

I don't hate him by any stretch. I just, I'm not really sure who Doug Martin is. Doug Martin and Eddie Lacey. They're both in this tier. Which would you draft? I would take Eddie Lacey. Oh, my gosh. I think I might lean that way, too, but I'll tell you.

Waterback. You can change the terms on it, but on half point PPR, Lacey versus Ted Martin. Yep. I'm leaving that one between you two. I'll take it. Here's what I do think about Doug Martin. I think he is right now becoming one of the better values at running back. I don't necessarily love Doug Martin. I don't think he'll repeat last year. If he did repeat, let's remind ourselves, right? Last year, Doug Martin was the third best running back. And you go, well, what scoring from him? Well, that was standard.

What about PPR? Full Point PPR. He was the fourth. I mean, he was a great running back last year, signed a big contract to stay with the team. I don't see them changing that, but there's these fears like, oh, Charles Sims was okay? This is an easy story here, okay? Tier three, we're going to tell a story in tier three that you led into. Mark Ingram, hurt last year. Lamar Miller, changing teams. LaShawn McCoy, hurt last year. Reuter Elliott. Rookie. Eddie Lacey, disappointment last year.

Devanta Freeman and Doug Martin, the only two guys that performed great last year. So you can't project a perfect repeat, but at least you've got two guys with a track record, the most recent track record that you can have. And you're projecting Lacey to come back. You're putting more faith in Lacey to come back than Martin to repeat. And that's the part that I don't support. And here's the best part. But they're both in the same tier. And so that's why you can make that decision as a fantasy owner.

Look at the tier 3s and pick a guy from that range. Yeah, and Doug Martin is going right now the ninth pick of the second round. He's late. He's been, you know, he might slip into the third round right now. So him and Mark Ingram are presenting really good values in this tier when it comes to where you're getting them in your draft. So you're on the clock at 209. You're grabbing a running back. Mark Ingram or Doug Martin? Mark Ingraham. Okay. Yeah, I feel pretty good about it.

Mark Ingraham and Doug Martin, but I'm going to take Ingram because it's half point, and I like the reception totals. And you've got Charles Sims, who we know can do that game in Tampa. All right, Tier 4 is the last one I'm going to go through here before we move on to wide receivers. This is just an overview of the tiers. I want to walk through the first one so you can see where we have them broken up. This is the separation. It's a pretty big one in our projected points between Devonta Freeman. I would say this is where I feel like things get a little dicey. Sure, yeah. Tier 4. It really drops off here. You have Thomas Rawls.

And that's somebody that, you know, strong opinions across the board. We don't know what's going on with the knee. I'm going to ask Mayo about him. Ryan Matthews. What did I say? Knee. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, his ankle. Ryan Matthews, John Stewart, Carlos Hyde, DeMarco Murray, Matt Jones, and C.J. Anderson. Matt Jones. And that is the tier four right now. That's a tier of death right there. And that tier, you know, you look at average draft position in that tier, and there's one that jumps right off the page. Thomas Rawls.

He's a second round pick. Everybody else is a fourth or fifth round pick right now in drafts. And so that's scary to me. You've got to pay the price for Thomas Rawls. And to elaborate more in what we're talking about, clearly he's not practicing right now. He's still injured. Chris and Michael taking the first team snaps. Now there's reports coming out from Seahawks beat reporters that they believe in Alex Collins, fifth round running back. They say,

We like this guy. We think he's going to compete for snaps right away, throwing CJ Pro size, eliminating the possibility of Rawls being a third downback. And you have a mess. If Rawls can't come back strong in training camp or right before the season and establish dominance, then there's some trouble for Thomas Rawls. You could end up with three backs there getting a lot. Oh, gross. I did see a little bit of good news on Thomas Rawls. Whoa!

I haven't heard good news on him in a long time. I saw news that he was walking through blitz pickup drills. Say, did he get married? No. No. Recently, he was on the field and I think their fifth practice walking through blitz pickup. That's good. I don't know. We can't act like he's not there and not part of the team. Sure, exactly. So I have one question in this tier because I was doing a draft and I could not, I mean, you weren't here, Andy. Oh, man. I was sweating bullets. I was on the clock. This was a real draft.

And he liquefied into a pool of goo. He looked like the secret life of Alex Mack. I needed you and he were gone for me. But I could not. I can help you now, brother. Yes. I appreciate it. It's too late. So I could not decide between Matt Jones and DeMarco Murray. This was a full point PPR. I have Matt Jones ahead just barely in my rankings than DeMarco Murray. And I could not figure out what to do. I don't know who you picked and I would have picked DeMarco Murray. You want to know who I picked? Matt Jones. Kobe Fleener.

Yeah. It was an MFL, so a lot of tight ends were off the board. That is really funny. Okay, so these guys are back to back in that tier four. So if you want to see the rest of the tiers, head over to the ultimate draft kit. You can watch. We have a rundown on every single guy. So let's get into the wide receivers. Go through the first two or three tiers there. Half point per reception. Of course. Wide receivers. Yeah, we've already understood why. Neil Degrass Tyson. All right, tier one.

This one should be, if I leave a blank space on the podcast right now, I'm pretty sure all the listeners can say three names. Let's say it together, everybody. Antonio Brown, Julio Jones, Odell Beckham, Jr. You got to get the junior in there. Junior. Junior. OBJ. Yeah, we got those three guys in their tier by themselves. Appropriately. But Andy. Oh, no. Geez. Don't you drop O'Dell Beckham down out of the tier because he's dating a Kardashian? Oh.

That is a very valid point. No, I actually went on a radio show the other day, and that was the only question they asked me. It's true. They said that you come on and talk fantasy. I said, okay, they go, they said, we have an unorthodox question about O'Dell Beckham Jr. And I kind of knew we're probably heading into the Kardashian territory here, and we were. And here's what I said. I said, if you want to use that as a tiebreaker, we've seen distractions like that cost players. Tony Romo was not good with Jessica Simpson.

But Oda Beckham Jr. It's just so ludicrous. Beckham Jr. is just too good. Oh, it is nonsense. Nonsense to blame the girl. I'm not blaming the girl. I'm blaming the distraction that is the publicity. Every time you go into an interview, what are they asking Odo Beckham Jr.? Are they asking him about the team? Are they asking him about his personal life? That's easy. Every time he goes out. Because it fits the same question every time it's easy. It's a picture.